


Falling Faster Than the Stars

by FireEye



Category: Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-22 13:07:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30039156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireEye/pseuds/FireEye
Summary: Nomad!V.  Emotions happen one fair evening, which could be great, maybe,sort of, for V at least, now if only he could figure out what exactly those emotionshappen to be.
Relationships: V/Jackie Welles
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	Falling Faster Than the Stars

The dregs of the evening dripped by slow and unhurried as they made their way through the neon-drenched streets. Rainwater mingled with the bloody handprint staining V’s neck, and soaked into her shirt. Jackie draped arm over her shoulders as they walked, comfortably enough.

It wasn’t enough to keep her dry, but that wasn’t why he did it.

Between the street and the upper levels of her building, she had slipped out from under his arm again, but she only pulled away from him in sight of home. The door slid open under her touch. On reflex Jackie moved to follow her, and nearly stepped right into her when, halfway through, she half-turned, blocking his way.

“You stayin’ the night?”

“Was planning on it being that way, yeah.”

It blindsided him, because _when was that ever a question?_

But a soft smile played across her lips, warming his heart, even though it faded out again almost as soon as it appeared. She stepped into the apartment, and once he’d followed her through the door hissed closed behind them.

Jackie shook his jacket out near the door, and V let hers slump near the couch, rainwater and all.

He drew her into his arms, pressing a kiss on her forehead as she turned into his embrace. Her fingers tangled in his shirt, then her hand flattened against his chest. She huffed a little breath right up against his mouth, and pushed herself away.

“Um. I’m gonna go... get washed up.” That sounded like a plan, until she followed it up with, “Order dinner, would you please?”

Already stripping out of her damp shirt, she stepped in the direction of the shower.

Jackie found he couldn’t argue, because dinner sounded like as good a plan. “Anything particular you in the mood for? Pizza?”

“Pizza would be perfect,” she called back.

Raising an eyebrow at the trail of clothes in her wake, Jackie smirked at the answer.

It took him a handful of minutes to connect the call and wait, and another few to place an order. By the time he was finished and moved to join her, V was stepping out of the shower again.

“I should have some clothes that’d fit you if you wanna get clean,” she remarked, slipping past him. On a second thought, she smiled wryly. “I... think they might be _yours_ , come to think of it.”

Again, he couldn’t argue. Not with logic, anyway. It might not have been the usual way he expected things to go around here by now, but _clean_ sounded nice.

And once he was finished getting clean – pulling his hair back up and finding the towel she’d left for him on the sink and the clothes beneath it – he thought she must’ve been right – these were his. His other clothes were gone, and hers were gone from the floor – all bundled together down the laundry chute he supposed.

Pizza had been delivered, and V was sitting on the couch, watching the bright rainy midnight outside the window. There was a strange wistfulness to her expression as she picked her bites, a melancholy that didn’t fit.

Then she noticed him, and it was gone. But it left behind that strange sort of a distance now between them; one that wasn’t there before. Jackie didn’t think it’d been there earlier in the evening, and not even on the job.

V slid herself over to make room for him, and nudged the pizza boxes and paper plates stacked on top of them.

“S’good,” she told him, before taking another bite of her slice. “Still warm.”

She didn’t curl up next to him like Jackie might have otherwise expected, simply went back to watching the window as he served himself. He watched her through his entire first slice, and partway into the next before wiping his hand on his jeans.

At length, he reached up to brush his the back of his fingers across her cheek, and she shivered; flicking his eyes towards him, she froze under his gaze as though she only just now remembered he was there.

 _You’re acting kinda weird, you know that?_ he wanted to tell her. He also wanted to know, _Everything alright with you?_

All he asked was, “V?”

“I, um... It’s just that...” sucking in a breath, she staggered through, “I’ve been thinking some shit through, and it might it’d be better if we chilled it... maybe, for a little while. You know?”

It sent a cold bucket of ice down his back. Shifting in his seat, Jackie forced himself to settle down again. He split his attention between her and his food.

“Yeah... sure, whatever you want.”

V nodded once, curtly, forcing a smile that nowhere near reached her eyes, and...

That was it.

He wanted to ask the details, but he knew better.

They ate in silence. Jackie barely tasted whatever flavor it was the pizza was meant to emulate. There was a dull ache of loss in his chest where there shouldn’t have been, because that was never what this thing between them was meant to be about in the first place.

Then he chuckled, sitting up straighter.

“ _Oh_. I get it now, I see what’s going on – you went and fell in love, didn’t you?”

Her head snapped towards him, her eyes wide and a question of _How did you...?_ all but written across her face. Caught, she took in a shaky breath, and shook her head.

“I... kept wanting to tell you, but I couldn’t figure out how...”

“Ah huh,” Jackie followed his lead, “And now this guy is telling you that if you wanna be with him, he doesn’t want you fooling around with anyone else.”

V blinked at him, mouth open until she thought to close it.

“No...” She ventured, “Actually, he’s been really understanding about that part. I just... I feel like I’m being unfair to him, you know?”

“Yeah, alright. I guess I can see where you’re coming from.”

Jackie took a thoughtful bite of pizza as he mulled it over. V sat still beside him, eyes drifting closed, only to snap open again when he nudged her with his elbow.

“So tell me about this guy of yours.”

“He’s... uh...” V itched the skin surrounding her neural port. “He’s... _kind_. Caring. Generous... just... been really, really good to me since I’ve known him. I think he gets me better than anyone I’ve ever met...” Her shoulders dropped, and she fell to playing with the hem of her sleeve. “Might even know me better than I know myself, sometimes.”

“Guess there’s no way I can compete with that,” Jackie admitted. “Anybody I know, or...?”

“I... yeah,” she sighed harshly, “You introduced us.”

“...I did?”

She nodded, flashing him a shallow smile that didn’t last. A moment to think it through, and Jackie made a sharp _ha!_ of triumph, snapping his fingers, and pointed to her.

“It’s Vik, isn’t it?”

“...no, it isn’t Vik.”

“ _¿No?_ ”

“No.”

“Ah.”

Jackie blew out a breath as he wracked his brain.

“It is a guy, right? Someone I introduced you to...” She’d said _he_ , and wasn’t contradicting him, so he presumed. He squinted at her. “It’s not my cousin, is it?”

“No. It’s not your cousin.”

...which was a slight relief, if he was about to be honest. “Good for that.”

Going down the options in his mind, Jackie scratched his chin. The list of guys he’d introduced her to wasn’t terribly short, but it _was_ mostly business, and apart from Vik he couldn’t remember her ever so much as talking it up with any of them.

Or if she had, he hadn’t noticed. And he thought he would’ve noticed something like this.

 _Wouldn’t_ he have?

If so, why hadn’t he noticed before _now_?

Moreover, none of them seemed to fit her description.

“A'ight, I give up, V. Who is it?”

V had abandoned her plate, staring into space where half a slice of pizza sat on the coffee table.

“You’re not even gonna tell me, are you?” Jackie asked. “Come on, you think like I’m gonna hurt the guy or somethin’? I just wanna congratulate him, you know? Tell him how lucky he is to have gotten in good with my partner.”

“Jackie just... drop it. Alright?”

“ _Tch_. Fine, have it your way.”

Jackie finished the crust of his pizza, and crumpled up his plate, carrying it with him as he got to his feet. It went in the garbage on his way to retrieve his jacket.

V didn’t seem to want him here, and he wasn’t about to impose.

He had one arm through a sleeve when behind him he heard her move; a faint rustle of her clothes and squeak of faux leather as she moved off the couch and the electric whisper of the door to her stash.

Jackie froze.

Licked his lip.

Swallowed.

Shrugged the rest of his jacket on, before turning around to face the glass door.

Something was wrong with all of this. V wasn’t acting like a woman in love; she was hurting something fierce and trying to stem the damage.

Jackie couldn’t leave her that way. Wouldn’t have forgiven himself ever if he had.

He caught up to her emptying out the pockets to her jacket – of all the junk she’d picked up that evening, and then some – onto her workbench. As he watched, a glass marble rolled over the edge, bouncing once before continuing across the floor.

Jackie leaned down to snatch it as it rolled right up to him, and straightened again, turning the marble this way and that.

It was clear, speckled with a cloud of sparkling little stars. Jackie smiled faintly, despite everything else – it was exactly V’s kind of treasure.

“Hey, V?” he asked, distantly, “This guy you’re sweet on... he even know you got a thing for him?”

“What...?” Her sorting grew slower, and V roused enough to answer a small, lost, “...no.”

The little stars in Jackie’s palm caught in the light. He blinked, and closed his fingers around them.

“He does now.”

V stilled.

The door closed behind him, his deceptively light steps carrying him to her side at the table. She squared towards him; holding out his hand, he offered her the marble back. She stared at it, and for a moment her hand hovered over his before she forced it back down to her side.

Jackie dropped his hand.

“I’m right, aren’t I?”

She didn’t answer, but she didn’t need to. It was written in the way her eyes narrowed, and the grim set of her mouth.

“How long you been bottling this up, V?”

“Six months? A year?” She scoffed, then sighed. “From the beginning? I think I felt different once, but... now I can’t even remember what that was like.”

“That’s a long fuckin’ time.”

Not like he was one to talk from experience or anything.

But it explained things. Some things. Not everything. In some ways, not _anything_. 

The marble had grown warm in his palm.

Again, he offered it back to her.

Again, V didn’t take it.

Jackie glanced at it, then back to the glass door. He placed the marble on the table amidst the rest of her collection, and scratched behind his ear.

“You, uh...” he managed to choke it out without sounding too strangled, “want me to go?”

“ _Of course not_.” It came out in a rush of breath. “I want you to stay, I want to be close to you, I wanted to _tell you_ , but... I just... It feels like I’m breaking what I’d promised you; like I’m taking more than I....”

She trailed off, and when nothing more seemed forthcoming, Jackie sighed.

He reached for her hand, and felt a little flutter of hope when she didn’t pull away. He rubbed his thumb over her knuckles.

“So what’re we gonna do about this thing of yours you been keepin’ all to yourself over a year?”

V shook her head. She twisted her hand in his, slowly, until she had a loose hold. Then she raised his hand up to press the heel of his thumb to her lips.

A deceptively gentle little, _“I don’t know,”_ whispered across his skin.

Jackie returned the sentiment, drawing her hand to his mouth. “Really, _chica_ ; what’s not to know, eh?”

She didn’t answer, not in an immediate rush, and he let her have her hand back, tracing the ink up her arm before letting his arm fall. When she did find her voice, it cracked, and V admitted softly, “I liked what we _had_. I didn’t want anything to change.”

“...who sayin’ anything’s gotta change?”

V blinked at nothing, then at him. Incredulity stained her voice. “You really think this doesn’t change anything?”

He thought about it for a few seconds, then acquiesced a nod. With a burst of laughter, he swept her off the floor, and V gave a sharp squeak of surprise, holding on as he spun her around. Loose cards and trinkets scattered, brushed from the table by the arc of her legs, and one of her feet smacked into a box of ammunition, clattering it over.

Mindful of none of it, Jackie dipped her forward, and she stretched out her knee in counterbalance.

“You’re right, it changes everything,” he let on with a grin. “But hey, who ever told you change has to be a bad thing?”

She managed to get her arms around his neck as he righted them. Hooking one arm under her knees so she was braced against one side, Jackie carried her back out through the door.

“ _Fuck’s sake_. What if it didn’t work out? What if we ended up _hating_ each other? Jackie, I _couldn’t_ -...”

Jackie shrugged. His grip loosened, and he let her slide down beside the window. “What if you miss all the best things in your life ‘cause of _what if_ , huh? What then?”

She reached to touch his arm, and her fingers curled as she dropped her hand again, falling back against the window.

“I don’t know,” she whispered again.

Jackie _tsk_ ed.

“Hey, V, you wanna know a secret?” He pushed her hair back over her shoulder, and leaned in close to her ear to divulge, “I like you, too.”

She huffed – a sharp, shaky little breath that skimmed his shoulder.

“So _really_ ,” Jackie asked, “what’re you gonna do about it?”

Raising her chin as though to meet the hint of a challenge in his voice, V fixed her gaze on him, expression inscrutable. For half a moment longer, besides the tracing of her eyes, she remained still.

Then her fingers were bunched up in his shirt, and he let himself be pulled down to her level as she drew herself up against him. Her mouth found his in a demanding question of fervor and desire, tinged with something soft like adoration, and he pushed her right back up against the window.

A sense of relief flooded through him as her hands slipped over his shoulders, locking behind his neck, and he drew her into his arms, tucking his face against her shoulder and enfolding her in a tight embrace.

“Fuck,” V breathed, “what did I almost do?”

“Nothin’,” Jackie chuckled. “‘Cause I was here to rattle some sense back into that gonk-brained crazy head of yours.”

V made a small sound in her throat. Not even an argument.

“Just don’t ever let go.”

Her arms tightened against his neck, and he pressed his arm a little more firmly against her back.

“Never,” Jackie promised. “Never ever.”

**Author's Note:**

> i reiterate, nothing bad happens in this game ever. :D


End file.
